Shadow Hunter (14 page)

‘Yes, Hicks,' Pike answered, keying the transmit switch.

‘Contact's fading, sir. Same bearing.'

‘There we are.
Victor's
slowing down. When he finds out he's lost us, he'll guess we've detected him,' Cordell concluded. ‘Now, will he expect us to keep the same course? If he starts searching left or right, he'll be stabbing in the dark. If he keeps to the same track he may think he's got a better chance of keeping on our tail.'

‘So what do we do, brains?'

‘I suggest we come left sixty degrees. That'll keep us in the deep Norwegian Basin, and put us at right-angles to him. We should pick him up on the bow sonar too, then – give us a better bearing and range.'

‘Depth?' Pike pressured.

‘He can go deeper than us, and faster. So why don't we go shallower, above the thermocline?'

The first sign of uncertainty flickered in his eyes. Pike was giving him no help.

‘Disadvantages of going shallow?'

‘Can't hear him any more. But still worthwhile, sir – I think.'

‘What else was in that last intelligence report? Any other “hostiles”?'

‘Nothing, sir – at least, not in the dope the captain handed out.'

Cordell's words were a reproach. Pike felt it directed at him. Glancing round, he sensed the attention of several
pairs of eyes. They'd all been unsettled by the captain's ‘pipe' the previous evening.

Pike wanted to round on them, saying he was as much in the dark about their mission as they were, but he kept silent; nothing should be done to undermine the authority of command at a time like this.

‘Navigator, any hazards to the north?'

‘None.'

‘Right! Planesman, ten up. Keep fifty metres. Port ten, steer three-five-five. Revolutions for ten knots.'

Cordell smiled fleetingly; his advice was being followed to the letter.

Pike took Lieutenant Nick Cavendish to the chart table. Bending over it and pretending to study a detail, he spoke in a whisper.

‘I'd better go and see Hitchens. You say you couldn't rouse him?'

‘Yup. Knocked on the door, called loudly, shook him by the shoulder even, but he was out cold.'

‘Wasn't dead, was he?'

‘Don't be daft! I told you, he was snoring his head off. It's unlike him – he's usually a light sleeper. On his feet instantly if you call him.'

‘Might've taken some sleeping pills. But he should have bloody told me if he was going to do that!' Pike hissed, resentful at yet another sign of his captain's disregard for him. ‘Okay, Nick. You have the ship. And not a word about the captain. Understand?'

‘Sebastian knows.'

‘Well, keep it to the two of you then.'

Cavendish crossed to the ship control console to check his orders were being followed. Already the decks were tilting, as the submarine banked and climbed to its new depth and course. The planesman pulled back on the control stick, eyes locked onto the indicators.

Pike grabbed at pipework to steady himself as he headed aft. Beyond the control room the red-light glow of the night encouraged a stillness in the boat, even though half the crew was on watch.

Outside the captain's cabin he hesitated, listening for
any sound of Hitchens stirring. Hearing none, he rapped on the door frame and waited. No response. He pulled back the edge of the curtain and looked inside. It was exactly as the navigator had described.

Hitchens
could be
dead, for all he knew. The thin face was turned away from him, mouth open, cheeks hollow. Pike shook him by the shoulder. The body stirred at his touch, taking in a startled breath, and then with a grunt sank back into deep sleep.

Best to leave him, Pike thought. He wasn't needed in the control room, and would be little use if forced out of a drugged sleep.

He stood back from the bunk and looked around for a pill container. He found it inside a small, blue sponge bag on the table. The name on the label was unfamiliar, but the pharmacist's instructions read ‘one to two at night when needed'. He pulled off the cap – it was one of those child-proof ones. Inside he counted about a dozen capsules. At least Hitchens hadn't taken the lot.

He looked at the wall-clock: 0200. Let him sleep it off.

Even asleep Hitchens' face looked stressed and unhappy. Enough stress to have unbalanced him? How could Pike tell? He was no medic, and they didn't have a doctor on board.

He pulled the curtain shut behind him and returned to the control room. The submarine was levelling off.

* * *

The crew of RAF Nimrod call-sign Eight-Lima-Golf could hardly believe the drama unfolding below them. The four-engined jet criss-crossed the pitch-black Norwegian Sea at 220 knots, 300 feet up, monitoring and plotting every detail of the duel under the waves.

On routine patrol from its base at Kinloss, the Nimrod had been directed to the area by reports from the Norwegian Air Force, whose P-3 Orion maritime patrol planes had suddenly delected the Soviet sub marine south of Vestfjord. Where it had come from, they didn't know.
Somehow it had escaped detection elsewhere in the Norwegian Sea.

The RAF were pleased to get in on the action; at first they'd suspected the target was one of the new ultra-quiet
Sierra
class boats. But then they picked up the characteristic noise signature of a
Victor,
albeit quieter than usual. Must've just come out of refit, they'd concluded.

It had taken time to find the
Victor;
the fix the Norwegians had given, was over an hour old. The first line of sonobuoys they'd dropped into the sea had drawn a blank. Knowing the
Victor's
ability to sprint at forty knots, the airborne electronics officer had gambled that the boat had turned north, to keep away from the shallows of the continental shelf.

He'd been right, but for the wrong reason.

Sixty miles north of the
Victor's
last known position they'd dropped eight Jezebel sonobuoys two miles apart, in a chevron from east to west. Once in the water the buoys separated into two sections; one part, containing an omni-directional hydrophone, dropped 150 metres while the other section, linked to it by cable, containing a small radio and antenna, floated to the surface to transmit to the aircraft the sounds the hydrophone detected.

The noise of a speeding
Victor
can travel great distances. All eight Jezebel buoys detected it simultaneously. The two operators on the AQS.901 acoustic processor inside the cramped and tatty fuselage of the Nimrod grinned at each other at the strength of the signals they were hearing through their headphones.

To their left, on a large circular TV screen, the tactical navigator was constructing his plot of the water below. The line of sonobuoys was marked by eight small green squares, each identified with a radio channel.

‘
Fifty and twenty-seven are top buoys
!'

The voice on the intercom indicated the Jezebels giving the strongest signals, the ones closest to the target.

Looking over the shoulder of the tactical navigator, the AEO saw that the top buoys were at each end of the chevron.

‘Spot on! He's coming straight for us,' he shouted with satisfaction.

Suddenly one processor operator jabbed a finger at the top of his sonar display, the green ‘waterfall' sound pattern detected by buoy ‘36' at the apex of the chevron. He was detecting something more than ripples in the pattern created by the distant
Victor
.

‘Hey, I've got something!' he snapped into his boom-microphone.

He spun a roller-ball to move the cursor to the low-frequency noise that had caught his eye, a frequency too low to be audible to the human ear.

His fingers flicked switches to focus the narrow-band analyser onto it.

‘I'm getting doppler effect on thirty-six,' he snapped again.

‘Same on forty-two,' the second operator reported.

A minute reduction in the frequency detected told them something other than the
Victor
had just passed between two hydrophones and was heading away from the line.

The tactical navigator moved a cursor across his video map, to the position of the new target. He pressed a key to fix the co-ordinates in the navigation computer. The aircraft turned on its new heading.

‘Prepare DIFARS seven-five and zero-nine,' the TacNav ordered.

In the rear of the plane aircrew selected directional buoys from a storage rack, set the radio channels, and loaded them into the ejection tubes.

A button on his control panel launched the first of the buoys. ‘Seven-five, gone. Turn now,' sang out the TacNav. The plane banked sharply to reach the launch position for the second.

The AEO clutched the edge of the processor housing to steady himself. The ‘G' force in the sharp turn threatened to buckle his knees.

‘Zero-nine, away.'

He crouched in front of the processor screens. The DIFAR buoys, directional and highly sensitive, would give the speed and bearing of the target.

Ten buoys in the water was no problem for the AQS.901. Sixteen could be monitored simultaneously on the four displays.

‘DIFAR seven-five gives bearing one-seven-zero, and decreasing.'

‘Zero-nine gives two-five-seven, increasing.'

‘Any classification yet?' the AEO asked.

The operators studied the pattern emerging on their screens. Listening didn't help; nothing but squeaks and crackles from shrimps and other marine life. It was down to the computer to analyse the low-frequency vibration of the target.

‘Looks like a bloody
Trafalgar
! That's the noise signature!'

The second operator nodded in agreement.

So that was it. That was why the
Victor
had headed north.

‘Bet he's never been that lucky before! A
Victor
tracking a
Trafalgar
? Impossible, according to the bloody Navy!'

‘They're both doing nearly 30 knots!'

The bearings from the DIFARs changed rapidly as the target passed between them. The Russian boat was coming up fast through the Jezebel line.

‘They'll both be deaf, going that fast,' the AEO remarked.

‘Hang on!' called the TacNav. ‘Our chap's slowing down.'

‘She's sprinting and drifting. This is where he finds out he's picked up a tail. Could get interesting!'

While they waited to see what the
Victor
would do, the AEO grabbed the signaller's clip-board of intelligence signals. Very odd. Not a word about a RN boat being in the area.

The portly, middle-aged AEO chortled inwardly at the chance of embarrassing the Navy. He drafted a brief, sarcastic signal to the joint Maritime headquarters at Northwood, reporting their contact, and asking if they knew where all their own submarines were. The radio operator hunched over his keyboard, encrypting the message from a code card.

* * *

Tim Pike was controlling the boat from the ‘bandstand', a circular railing in the centre of the control room.

‘Depth fifty metres,' yelled the helmsman.

‘Control Room, Sound Room
!
'
the communications box crackled.

Pike clicked the switch and acknowledged.

‘Contact's gone active, sir! The sod's pinging us!'

Cordell threw himself at the AIS Console. Sonar data were transferred automatically from the sound room to the AIS.

The intercept sensor projecting like a stubby finger from the upper casing of
Truculent
had detected the faint ‘ping' from below the thermocline. The computer gave them a bearing and range.

Cordell saw from the amber lines snaking across the screen that the ‘ping' had been too weak to detect them. The sound-absorbing tiles coating their hull would have prevented an echo.

‘Out of range,' he called over his shoulder. ‘Contact bearing two-six-zero. Range five-thousand-three-hundred yards. Depth three-hundred metres.'

‘Closer than we thought,' Pike breathed, leaning over the TAS officer's shoulder. ‘Odd! The Soviets don't usually go active – don't want to give away their frequencies.'

The use of active sonar was a last resort for submariners; the signal inevitably revealed the position of the transmitting boat.

‘He's just pinged again. Different angle. He's searching for us.'

‘Time to show him our tail,' warned Pike. ‘Steer zero-eight-zero. Revolutions for thirty knots. Clear the datum.'

‘He's dead keen to keep tabs on us,' Cordell mused. ‘Perhaps there's a promotion in it for him!'

The submarine banked to starboard; the men in the control room gripped fittings and grab-rails.

Truculent
would make more noise going fast, and her
sonar would be deaf, but they needed the distance. Just a few minutes' sprint, then they'd slow down to listen.

‘Give us room! Give us room!' Pike muttered to himself, his body spring-tight with tension. ‘When he realizes we're not deep any more, he'll come up here looking for us.'

Silence fell in the control room, anxious eyes fixed on dials and screens.

‘Still pinging?' Pike checked.

‘No, he's stopped,' replied Cordell.

‘Are we out of range if he pings again directly at us?'

‘Probably not. Stern on, we're a small target, but he might get an echo off the propulsor.'

Truculent
's propulsion system was like an aircraft's turbojet, a double row of compressor fans encased in a tube. Only from directly astern could the blades be detected on sonar.

‘Another course change,' Pike ordered, swinging round to the planesman. ‘Port five. Steer zero-six-zero, and be ready to go deep again.'

‘How long now at this speed?' Pike asked.

‘Six minutes, sir!' answered the navigator.